About Postcomm

Who we are

Postcomm – the Postal Services Commission – is the independent regulator for the postal market. We were set up by the Postal Services Act 2000 and are classified as a non-ministerial government department. Our work is steered by our commissioners, including the chief executive, Tim Brown and chairman, Nigel Stapleton.

What we do

Our job is to make sure licensed postal operators – including Royal Mail – meet the needs of their customers throughout the UK.

We do this by:

Protecting the universal service - The universal service means that anyone in the UK can post letters and parcels to any other part of the country at the same affordable rates. And it guarantees daily delivery of mail for every UK household and business, six days a week, and one collection per day, every day except Sunday.

Licensing postal operators - Postal operators dealing with mail costing less than £1 to deliver and weighing less than 350 grams must have a licence from us.

Introducing competition into mail services - We opened the UK mail market to competition for bulk mail services (postings of 4,000 items or more) in 2003, and followed that with full market opening on 1 January 2006.

Regulating Royal Mail - With more than 90% of the letters market, Royal Mail is the dominant provider of mail services in the UK and will probably remain so for years to come. In order to protect customers and prevent the company from taking unfair advantage of its dominant position, we regulate Royal Mail’s quality of service and its prices.

Postcomm attends, along with a number of other regulators, The Joint Regulators' Group (JRG) which meets four times a year to discuss issues of mutual concern and which reports on recent developments in members' own particular sectors.